Concerns About Health Care Costs Approximately 42 percent of people in the United States will get cancer and half of those people will die from the disease. For the first time in American history, cancer has now eclipsed heart disease as the leading cause of death in people 85 years of age and younger, according to the American Cancer Society. The death rates from heart disease have plummeted over the last 30 years, in no small part due to statins, so drugs can make a big difference in helping people with disease live longer.
Contrary to what many people assume, drugs are a fairly small piece of the puzzle when it comes to health care costs — and cancer drugs are only a small slice of that piece. Health care costs were 16 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product in 2005, and prescription drugs represented only 10 percent of those total health care costs.1,2 Of that 10 percent of total health care costs going to prescription drugs, only five percent went to cancer medicines.3
We understand societal concerns that our health care system is too expensive, and we are interested in discussing and partnering on solutions to improve our system. The "simple" solution of reducing drug prices will have a marginal effect on health care costs while stifling R&D investment in new treatments. We believe reduced investment in R&D would be a regrettable outcome at a time when our vastly improved understanding of cancer biology may give us the tools to significantly extend the lives of patients with cancer.
Improving outcomes for patients with cancer will be a long and expensive journey, but we believe it is a good investment for us as a company and for the United States as a country.
1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. National Health Expenditure Data Highlights. http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf
2 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Nation's Health Dollar, Calendar Year 2005: Where It Went. http://www.cms.hhs.gov/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/
PieChartSourcesExpenditures2005.pdf
3 Intercontinental Marketing Services (IMS) Health. IMS National Sales Perspectives. 2006